Right-libertarianism

This article is about the type of libertarianism supporting capitalism and private ownership of natural resources. For the ideology combining conservatism with libertarianism, or representing the conservative wing of libertarianism, see Libertarian conservatism. For the type of libertarianism supporting conservative social policies, see Paleolibertarianism.

Right-libertarian political thought is characterized by the strict priority given to liberty, with the need to maximize the realm of individual freedom and minimize the scope of public authority.[27] Right-libertarians typically see the state as the principal threat to liberty. This anti-statism differs from anarchist doctrines in that it is based upon an uncompromising individualism that places little or no emphasis upon human sociability or cooperation.[2][27][28] Right-libertarian philosophy is also rooted in the ideas of individual rights and laissez-faire economics. The right-libertarian theory of individual rights generally stresses self-ownership and that people have an absolute entitlement to the property that their labor produces.[27] Economically, right-libertarians make no distinction between capitalism and free markets and view any attempt to dictate the market process as counterproductive, emphasizing the mechanisms and self-regulating nature of the market whilst portraying government intervention and attempts to redistribute wealth as invariably unnecessary and counter-productive.[27] Although all right-libertarians oppose government intervention, there is a division between anarcho-capitalists, who view the state as an unnecessary evil and want property rights protected without statutory law through market-generated tort, contract and property law; and minarchists, who recognize the necessary need for a minimal state, often referred to as a night-watchman state, to provide its citizens with courts, the military and the police.[3]

While influenced by classical liberal thought, with some viewing right-libertarianism as an outgrowth or as a variant of it,[29] there are significant differences. Edwin van de Haar argues that "confusingly, in the United States the term libertarianism is sometimes also used for or by classical liberals. But this erroneously masks the differences between them".[30] Classical liberalism refuses to give priority to liberty over order and therefore does not exhibit the hostility to the state which is the defining feature of libertarianism.[27] As such, right-libertarians believe classical liberals favor too much state involvement,[31] arguing that they do not have enough respect for individual property rights and lack sufficient trust in the workings of the free market and its spontaneous order leading to support of a much larger state.[31] Right-libertarians also disagree with classical liberals as being too supportive of central banks and monetarist policies.[32]

People described as being "left-libertarian" or "right-libertarian" generally tend to call themselves simply "libertarians" and refer to their philosophy as "libertarianism". As a result, some authors and political scientists classify the forms of libertarianism into two groups,[33][34] namely left-libertarianism and right-libertarianism,[1][2][3][4][7] to distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital.[9]

Right-libertarianism has been described as combining individual freedom and opposition to the state, with strong support for free markets and private property. Property rights have been the issue that has divided libertarian philosophies. According to Jennifer Carlson, right-libertarianism is the dominant form of libertarianism in the United States. Right-libertarians "see strong private property rights as the basis for freedom and thus are—to quote the title of Brian Doherty's text on libertarianism in the United States—"radicals for capitalism".[4]

Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony J. McGann contrast right-libertarianism—"a strategy that combines pro-market positions with opposition to hierarchical authority, support of unconventional political participation, and endorsement of feminism and of environmentalism"—with right-authoritarianism.[43][44]

American libertarian activist and politician David Nolan, the principal founder of the Libertarian Party, developed what is now known as the Nolan Chart to replace the traditional left–right political spectrum. The Nolan Chart has been used by several modern American libertarians and right-libertarians who reject the traditional political spectrum for its lack of inclusivity and see themselves as north-of-center. It is used in an effort to quantify typical libertarian views that support both free markets and social liberties and reject what they see as restrictions on economic and personal freedom imposed by the left and the right, respectively,[54] although this later point has been criticized.[55] Other libertarians reject the separation of personal and economic liberty, or that the Nolan Chart gives no weight to foreign policy.[56]

Since the resurgence of neoliberalism in the 1970s, right-libertarianism has spread beyond North America via think tanks and political parties.[57][58] In the United States, libertarianism is increasingly viewed as this capitalist free-market position.[59][60]

Peter Vallentyne writes that libertarianism, defined as being about self-ownership, is not a right-wing doctrine in the context of the typical left–right political spectrum because on social issues it tends to be left-wing, opposing laws restricting consensual sexual relationships between or drug use by adults as well as laws imposing religious views or practices and compulsory military service. He defines right-libertarianism as holding that unowned natural resources "may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes her labor with them, or merely claims them—without the consent of others, and with little or no payment to them". He contrasts this with left-libertarianism, where such "unappropriated natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner".[15] Similarly, Charlotte and Lawrence Becker maintain that right-libertarianism most often refers to the political position that because natural resources are originally unowned, they may be appropriated at-will by private parties without the consent of, or owing to, others.[65]

Anthony Gregory maintains that libertarianism "can refer to any number of varying and at times mutually exclusive political orientations". While holding that the important distinction for libertarians is not left or right, but whether they are "government apologists who use libertarian rhetoric to defend state aggression", he describes right-libertarianism as having and maintaining interest in economic freedom, preferring a conservative lifestyle, viewing private business as a "great victim of the state" and favoring a non-interventionist foreign policy, sharing the Old Right's "opposition to empire".[70]

While the defining characteristic of some kinds of right-libertarianism is cultural or social conservatism, Kevin Carson has coined the term "vulgar libertarianism" to describe a different variety of "right-libertarianism", one which involves the use of libertarian rhetoric in capitalist apologetics. Carson uses "vulgar libertarianism" to refer to the use of talk about what could be expected in a genuinely free market to justify some or all of "actually existing capitalism" which according to Carson is distorted by state-secured privilege and lacks many of the defining features of a free market. Carson derives this phrase from Karl Marx's "vulgar political economy", a style of economic reasoning that "deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the ideas which contain the contradictions [evident in economic life]".[71] Carson treats "vulgar libertarianism" as a tendency within much right-libertarian writing rather than a category into which any figure could be thought to fit on all occasions. He has claimed to find it in the work of such authors as Eamonn Butler and Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute as well as on occasion the writings of others including Radley Balko, Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises.[72]

Murray Rothbard, whose writings and personal influence helped create some strands of right-libertarianism,[73] wrote about the Old Right in the United States, a loose coalition of individuals formed in the 1930s to oppose the New Deal at home and military interventionism abroad. He wrote that they "did not describe or think of themselves as conservatives: they wanted to repeal and overthrow, not conserve".[74]Bill Kauffman has also written about such "old right libertarians".[75]

Libertarianism is often thought of as 'right-wing' doctrine. This, however, is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, on social—rather than economic—issues, libertarianism tends to be 'left-wing'. It opposes laws that restrict consensual and private sexual relationships between adults (e.g., gay sex, non-marital sex, and deviant sex), laws that restrict drug use, laws that impose religious views or practices on individuals, and compulsory military service. Second, in addition to the better-known version of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—there is also a version known as 'left-libertarianism'. Both endorse full self-ownership, but they differ with respect to the powers agents have to appropriate unappropriated natural resources (land, air, water, etc.).[15]

Right-libertarians are distinguished from the dominant libertarian tradition by their relation to property and capital. While both libertarianism and right-libertarianism share general antipathy towards power by government authority, the latter exempts power wielded through free-market capitalism. Historically, libertarians such as Herbert Spencer and Max Stirner supported the protection of an individual's freedom from powers of government and private ownership. While condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, right-libertarians support freedoms on the basis of their agreement with private property rights and the abolishment of public amenities is a common theme in right-libertarian writings.[9][112]

While associated with free-market capitalism, right-libertarianism is not opposed in principle to voluntary egalitarianism and socialism.[113] However, right-libertarians believe that their advocated economic system would prove superior and that people would prefer it to socialism. For Nozick, it does not imply support of capitalism, but merely that capitalism is compatible with libertarianism,[114] something which is rejected by anti-capitalist libertarians.[115][116][117][118]

According to Stephen Metcalf, Nozick expressed serious misgivings about capitalism, going so far as to reject much of the foundations of the theory on the grounds that personal freedom can sometimes only be fully actualized via a collectivist politics and that wealth is at times justly redistributed via taxation to protect the freedom of the many from the potential tyranny of an overly selfish and powerful few.[119] Nozick suggested that citizens who are opposed to wealth redistribution which fund programs they object to should be able to opt out by supporting alternative government approved charities with an added 5% surcharge.[120] Nonetheless, Nozick did not stop from self-identifying as a libertarian in a broad sense[121] and Julian Sanchez has argued that his views simply became more nuanced.[122]

The non-aggression principle (NAP) is often described as the foundation of several present-day libertarian philosophies, including right-libertarianism.[123][124][125][126][127] The NAP is a moral stance which forbids actions that are inconsistent with capitalist private property and property rights. It defines aggression and initiation of force as violation of these rights. The NAP and property rights are closely linked since what constitutes aggression depends on what it is considered to be one's property.[128]

While there is debate on whether right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism or socialist libertarianism "represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme", right-libertarianism is most in favor of capitalist private property and property rights.[136] Right-libertarians maintain that unowned natural resources "may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes his labor with them, or merely claims them—without the consent of others, and with little or no payment to them". This contrasts with left-libertarianism in which "unappropriated natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner".[137] Right-libertarians believe that natural resources are originally unowned and therefore private parties may appropriate them at will without the consent of, or owing to, others (e.g. a land value tax).[138]

Right-libertarians are also referred to as propertarians because they hold that societies in which private property rights are enforced are the only ones that are both ethical and lead to the best possible outcomes.[139] They generally support free-market capitalism and are not opposed to any concentrations of economic power, provided it occurs through non-coercive means.[140] This has been criticized because "the holders of large amounts of property have great power to dictate the terms upon which others work for them and thus in effect the power to "force" others to be resources for them".[6]

There is a debate amongst right-libertarians as to whether or not the state is legitimate. While anarcho-capitalists advocate its abolition, minarchists support minimal states, often referred to as night-watchman states. Minarchists maintain that the state is necessary for the protection of individuals from aggression, breach of contract, fraud and theft. They believe the only legitimate governmental institutions are courts, military and police, although some expand this list to include the executive and legislative branches, fire departments and prisons. These minarchists justify the state on the grounds that it is the logical consequence of adhering to the non-aggression principle.[141][142][143] Some minarchists argue that a state is inevitable, believing anarchy to be futile.[144] Others argue that anarchy is immoral because it implies that the non-aggression principle is optional and not sufficient to enforce the non-aggression principle because the enforcement of laws under anarchy is open to competition.[145] Another common justification is that private defense agencies and court firms would tend to represent the interests of those who pay them enough.[146]

Right-libertarians such as anarcho-capitalists argue that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its nature because governments use force against those who have not stolen or vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.[147][148] Others argue that monopolies tend to be corrupt and inefficient and that private defense and court agencies would have to have a good reputation in order to stay in business. Linda and Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency.[149]

Philosopher Moshe Kroy argues that the disagreement between anarcho-capitalists who adhere to Murray Rothbard's view of human consciousness and the nature of values and minarchists who adhere to Ayn Rand's view of human consciousness and the nature of values over whether or not the state is moral is not due to a disagreement over the correct interpretation of a mutually held ethical stance. He argues that the disagreement between these two groups is instead the result of their disagreement over the nature of human consciousness and that each group is making the correct interpretation of their differing premises. According to Kroy, these two groups are not making any errors with respect to deducing the correct interpretation of any ethical stance because they do not hold the same ethical stance.[150]

The idea of taxation as theft is a viewpoint found in a number of political philosophies. Under this view, government transgresses property rights by enforcing compulsory tax collection.[151][152] Right-libertarians see taxation as a violation of the non-aggression principle.[153]

Within right-libertarian philosophy, minarchism[166] is supportive of a night-watchman state, a model of a state whose only functions are to provide its citizens with courts, military and police, protecting them from aggression, breach of contract, fraud and theft whilst enforcing property laws.[141][142][143] 19th-century Britain has been described by historian Charles Townshend as standard-bearer of this form of government among European countries.[167]

As a term, "night-watchman state" (German: Nachtwächterstaat) was coined by German socialistFerdinand Lassalle, an advocate of social democraticstate socialism, to criticize the bourgeois state.[168] Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises, a classical liberal who greatly influenced right-libertarianism, later opined that Lassalle tried to make limited government look ridiculous, but that it was no more ridiculous than governments that concerned themselves with "the preparation of sauerkraut, with the manufacture of trouser buttons, or with the publication of newspapers".[169]

Neoliberalism emerged in the era following World War II during which social liberalism was the mainstream form of liberalism while Keynesianism and social democracy were the dominant ideologies in the Western world. It was led by economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman,[186] who advocated the reduction of the state and a return to classical liberalism, hence the term neo-classical liberalism. However, it did accept some aspects of social liberalism such as some degree of welfare provision by the state, but on a greatly reduced scale. Hayek and Friedman used the term classical liberalism to refer to their ideas, but others use the term to refer to all liberalism before the 20th century, not to designate any particular set of political views and therefore see all modern developments as being by definition not classical.[29]

Right-libertarianism has been influenced by these schools of liberalism. It has been commonly referred to as a continuation or radicalization of classical liberalism[29][104][105][187] and referred to as neo-classical liberalism.[188]

Propertarianism advocates the replacement of states with contractual relationships. Propertarian ideals are most commonly cited to advocate for a state or other governance body whose main or only job is to enforce contracts and private property.[204][205]

Propertarianism is generally considered right-libertarian because it "reduce[s] all human rights to rights of property, beginning with the natural right of self-ownership".[206]

As a term, propertarian appears to have been coined in 1963 by Edward Cain, who wrote:

Since their use of the word "liberty" refers almost exclusively to property, it would be helpful if we had some other word, such as "propertarian," to describe them. [...] Novelist Ayn Rand is not a conservative at all but claims to be very relevant. She is a radical capitalist, and is the closest to what I mean by a propertarian.[207]

Prominent British right-libertarians include former director of the Libertarian AllianceSean Gabb and philosopher Stephen R. L. Clark, who are seen as rightists. Gabb has called himself "a man of the right"[222] and Clark self-identifies as an "anarcho-conservative".[223][224] Gabb has also articulated a libertarian defense of the British Empire.[225] At the same time, Gabb has given a generally appreciative commentary of left-libertarian Kevin Carson's work on organization theory[226] and Clark has supported animal rights, gender inclusiveness and non-judgmental attitude toward some unconventional sexual arrangements.[227][228][229][230]

Austrian School economists which greatly influenced the development of right-libertarianism in the United States

Right-libertarianism is the dominant form and better known version of libertarianism in the United States,[4][14] especially when compared with left-libertarianism.[15]Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard have been described as the most noted advocate of this type of libertarianism.[2][3][7] Unlike Rothbard, who argued for the abolition of the state,[232] Nozick argued for a night-watchman state.[170] To this day, there remains a division between anarcho-capitalists that advocate its abolition and minarchists who support a night-watchman state.[3] According to Nozick, only such a minimal state could be justified without violating people's rights. Nozick argued that a night-watchman state provides a framework that allows for any political system that respects fundamental individual rights and therefore morally justifies the existence of a state.[171][172]

Already a radical classical liberal and anti-interventionist strongly influenced by the Old Right, especially its opposition to the managerial state whilst being more unequivocally anti-war and anti-imperialist,[233] Rothbard had become the doyen of right-libertarianism.[234][235] Before his departure from the New Left, with which he helped build for a few years a relationship with other libertarians, Rothbard considered liberalism and libertarianism to be left-wing, radical and revolutionary whereas conservatism to be right-wing, reactionary and counter-revolutionary. As for socialism, especially state socialism, Rothbard argued that it was not the opposite of libertarianism, but rather that it pursued liberal ends through conservative means, putting it in the political center.[236][237] By the time of his death in 1995,[238] Rothbard had involved the segment of the libertarian movement loyal to him in an alliance with the growing paleoconservative movement, seen by many observers, libertarian and otherwise, as flirting with racism and social reaction.[239][240] Suggesting that libertarians needed a new cultural profile that would make them more acceptable to socially and culturally conservative people, Rothbard criticized the tendency of proponents of libertarianism to appeal to "'free spirits,' to people who don't want to push other people around, and who don't want to be pushed around themselves" in contrast to "the bulk of Americans", who "might well be tight-assed conformists, who want to stamp out drugs in their vicinity, kick out people with strange dress habits, etc." while emphasizing that this was relevant as a matter of strategy. Rothbard argued that the failure to pitch the libertarian message to Middle America might result in the loss of "the tight-assed majority".[241]

At least partly reflective of some of the social and cultural concerns that lay beneath Rothbard's outreach to paleoconservatives is paleolibertarianism.[242] In an early statement of this position, Lew Rockwell and Jeffrey Tucker arguing for a specifically Christian libertarianism.[96] Later, Rockwell would no longer consider himself a "paleolibertarian" and was "happy with the term libertarian".[243] While distancing himself from the paleolibertarian alliance strategy, Rockwell affirmed paleoconservatives for their "work on the immigration issue", maintaining that "porous borders in Texas and California" could be seen as "reducing liberty, not increasing it, through a form of publicly subsidized right to trespass".[244]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that "libertarians must be conservatives".[245] Hoppe acknowledges what he describes as "the importance, under clearly stated circumstances, of discriminating against communists, democrats, and habitual advocates of alternative, non-family centered lifestyles, including homosexuals".[246][247] Contra Walter Block[248] and arguing that libertarianism need not be seen as requiring open borders,[249] Hoppe attributes "open border enthusiasm" to "egalitarianism".[250] While defending market anarchy in preference to both, Hoppe has argued for the superiority of monarchy to democracy, maintaining that monarchs are likely to be better stewards of the territory they claim to own than democratic politicians, whose time horizons may be shorter.[251]

Defending the fusion of traditionalist conservatism with libertarianism and rejecting the view that libertarianism means support for a liberal culture, Edward Feser implies that a central issue for those who share his viewpoint is "the preservation of traditional morality—particularly traditional sexual morality, with its idealization of marriage and its insistence that sexual activity be confined within the bounds of that institution, but also a general emphasis on dignity and temperance over self-indulgence and dissolute living".[252]

Walter Block identifies Feser, Hoppe and Ron Paul as "right-libertarians".[46] Rothbard's outreach to conservatives was partly triggered by his perception of negative reactions within the Libertarian Party to 1988 presidential nominee Ron Paul because of Paul's conservative appearance and his discomfort with abortion. Nonetheless, Paul himself did not make cultural issues central to his public persona during his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination and focused on a simple message of support for personal freedom and civil liberties, commitment to fiscal discipline and opposition to war,[253] although he did continue to take what some regarded as a conservative position regarding immigration, arguing for some restrictions on cross-border freedom of movement.[254]

Paul's fellow libertarian anti-militarist Justin Raimondo, a co-founder of Antiwar.com, has described himself as a "conservative paleolibertarian". Unlike Feser and Rockwell, Raimondo's Reclaiming the American Right argues for a resurgence of Old Right political attitudes and it does not focus on the social and cultural issues that are of central importance to Foser and Rockwell.[255]

^ abcdefghijGoodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 4. "'Libertarian' and 'libertarianism' are frequently employed by anarchists as synonyms for 'anarchist' and 'anarchism', largely as an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations of 'anarchy' and its derivatives. The situation has been vastly complicated in recent decades with the rise of anarcho-capitalism, 'minimal statism' and an extreme right-wing laissez-faire philosophy advocated by such theorists as Rothbard and Nozick and their adoption of the words 'libertarian' and 'libertarianism'. It has therefore now become necessary to distinguish between their right libertarianism and the left libertarianism of the anarchist tradition".

^ abcdefghiMarshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. "The problem with the term 'libertarian' is that it is now also used by the Right. [...] In its moderate form, right libertarianism embraces laissez-faire liberals like Robert Nozick who call for a minimal State, and in its extreme form, anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman who entirely repudiate the role of the State and look to the market as a means of ensuring social order".

^ abcdefNewman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 53. ISBN978-0-7486-3495-8. It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism). There is a complex debate within this tradition between those like Robert Nozick, who advocate a 'minimal state', and those like Rothbard who want to do away with the state altogether and allow all transactions to be governed by the market alone. From an anarchist perspective, however, both positions—the minimal state (minarchist) and the no-state ('anarchist') positions—neglect the problem of economic domination; in other words, they neglect the hierarchies, oppressions, and forms of exploitation that would inevitably arise in a laissez-faire 'free' market. [...] Anarchism, therefore, has no truck with this right-wing libertarianism, not only because it neglects economic inequality and domination, but also because in practice (and theory) it is highly inconsistent and contradictory. The individual freedom invoked by right-wing libertarians is only a narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all.

^Kymlicka 2005, p. 516: "Right-wing libertarians argue that the right of self-ownership entails the right to appropriate unequal parts of the external world, such as unequal amounts of land."

^Vallentyne 2007, p. 6. "The best-known versions of libertarianism are right-libertarian theories, which hold that agents have a very strong moral power to acquire full private property rights in external things. Left-libertarians, by contrast, hold that natural resources (e.g., space, land, minerals, air, and water) belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner and thus cannot be appropriated without the consent of, or significant payment to, the members of society." sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFVallentyne2007 (help)

^ abcdRothbard, Murray (2009) [2007]. The Betrayal of the American Right(PDF). Mises Institute. p. 83. ISBN978-1610165013. One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy. 'Libertarians' had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over.

^ abBookchin, Murray (January 1986). "The Greening of Politics: Toward a New Kind of Political Practice". Green Perspectives: Newsletter of the Green Program Project (1). "We have permitted cynical political reactionaries and the spokesmen of large corporations to pre-empt these basic libertarian American ideals. We have permitted them not only to become the specious voice of these ideals such that individualism has been used to justify egotism; the pursuit of happiness to justify greed, and even our emphasis on local and regional autonomy has been used to justify parochialism, insularism, and exclusivity – often against ethnic minorities and so-called deviant individuals. We have even permitted these reactionaries to stake out a claim to the word libertarian, a word, in fact, that was literally devised in the 1890s in France by Elisée Reclus as a substitute for the word anarchist, which the government had rendered an illegal expression for identifying one's views. The propertarians, in effect – acolytes of Ayn Rand, the earth mother of greed, egotism, and the virtues of property – have appropriated expressions and traditions that should have been expressed by radicals but were willfully neglected because of the lure of European and Asian traditions of socialism, socialisms that are now entering into decline in the very countries in which they originated".

^ abFernandez, Frank (2001). Cuban Anarchism. The History of a Movement. Sharp Press. p. 9. "Thus, in the United States, the once exceedingly useful term "libertarian" has been hijacked by egotists who are in fact enemies of liberty in the full sense of the word."

^ ab"The Week Online Interviews Chomsky". Z Magazine. 23 February 2002. "The term libertarian as used in the US means something quite different from what it meant historically and still means in the rest of the world. Historically, the libertarian movement has been the anti-statist wing of the socialist movement. In the US, which is a society much more dominated by business, the term has a different meaning. It means eliminating or reducing state controls, mainly controls over private tyrannies. Libertarians in the US don't say let's get rid of corporations. It is a sort of ultra-rightism."

^Ward, Colin (2004). Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 62. "For a century, anarchists have used the word 'libertarian' as a synonym for 'anarchist', both as a noun and an adjective. The celebrated anarchist journal Le Libertaire was founded in 1896. However, much more recently the word has been appropriated by various American free-market philosophers."

^ abcMarshall, Peter (2009). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. p. 641. "The word 'libertarian' has long been associated with anarchism, and has been used repeatedly throughout this work. The term originally denoted a person who upheld the doctrine of the freedom of the will; in this sense, Godwin was not a 'libertarian', but a 'necessitarian'. It came however to be applied to anyone who approved of liberty in general. In anarchist circles, it was first used by Joseph Déjacque as the title of his anarchist journal Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social published in New York in 1858. At the end of the last century, the anarchist Sebastien Faure took up the word, to stress the difference between anarchists and authoritarian socialists".

^Marshall, Peter (2009). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. p. 641. "For a long time, libertarian was interchangable in France with anarchism but in recent years, its meaning has become more ambivalente. Some anarchists like Daniel Guérin will call themselves 'libertarian socialists', partly to avoid the negative overtones still associated with anarchism, and partly to stress the place of anarchism within the socialist tradition. Even Marxists of the New Left like E. P. Thompson call themselves 'libertarian' to distinguish themselves from those authoritarian socialists and communists who believe in revolutionary dictatorship and vanguard parties."

^Newman 2010, p. 43: "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Murray Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism). There is a complex debate within this tradition between those like Robert Nozick, who advocate a 'minimal state', and those like Rothbard who want to do away with the state altogether and allow all transactions to be governed by the market alone. From an anarchist perspective, however, both positions—the minimal state (minarchist) and the no-state ('anarchist') positions—neglect the problem of economic domination; in other words, they neglect the hierarchies, oppressions, and forms of exploitation that would inevitably arise in a laissez-faire 'free' market. [...] Anarchism, therefore, has no truck with this right-wing libertarianism, not only because it neglects economic inequality and domination, but also because in practice (and theory) it is highly inconsistent and contradictory. The individual freedom invoked by right-wing libertarians is only a narrow economic freedom within the constraints of a capitalist market, which, as anarchists show, is no freedom at all." sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFNewman2010 (help)

^Long, Joseph. W (1996). "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Class". Social Philosophy and Policy. 15 (2): 310. "When I speak of 'libertarianism' [...] I mean all three of these very different movements. It might be protested that LibCap [libertarian capitalism], LibSoc [libertarian socialism] and LibPop [libertarian populism] are too different from one another to be treated as aspects of a single point of view. But they do share a common—or at least an overlapping—intellectual ancestry."

^Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: SAGE Publications. p. 1006. ISBN1412988764. "There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertarianism, and left-libertarianism; the extent to which these represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme is contested by scholars."

^Woodcock, George (1962). Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Meridian Books. p. 280. "He called himself a "social poet," and published two volumes of heavily didactic verse—Lazaréennes and Les Pyrénées Nivelées. In New York, from 1858 to 1861, he edited an anarchist paper entitled Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social, in whose pages he printed as a serial his vision of the anarchist Utopia, entitled L'Humanisphére."

^Hussain, Syed B. (2004). Encyclopedia of Capitalism. Vol. II : H-R. New York: Facts on File Inc. p. 492. ISBN0816052247. In the modern world, political ideologies are largely defined by their attitude towards capitalism. Marxists want to overthrow it, liberals to curtail it extensively, conservatives to curtail it moderately. Those who maintain that capitalism is a excellent economic system, unfairly maligned, with little or no need for corrective government policy, are generally known as libertarians.

^Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilburn R., ed. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America. London: Sage Publications. p. 1006. ISBN1412988764. "There exist three major camps in libertarian thought: right-libertarianism, socialist libertarianism, and left-libertarianism. [...] [S]ocialist libertarians [...] advocate for the simultaneous abolition of both government and capitalism."

^Carson, Kevin. Studies in Mutualist Political Economy]. Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge. p. 142. "Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they're defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get the standard boilerplate article in The Freeman arguing that the rich can't get rich at the expense of the poor, because "that's not how the free market works"—implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they'll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations on the basis of "free market principles."

^"About the Libertarian Party". Libertarian Party. Retrieved 27 June 2019. "Libertarians strongly oppose any government interference into their personal, family, and business decisions. Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another".

^Newman, Saul (2010). The Politics of Postanarchism. Edinburgh University Press. p. 43. ISBN0748634959. "It is important to distinguish between anarchism and certain strands of right-wing libertarianism which at times go by the same name (for example, Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism)".

^Marshall, Peter (2008). Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Harper Perennial. p. 565. "In fact, few anarchists would accept the 'anarcho-capitalists' into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice, Their self-interested, calculating market men would be incapable of practicing voluntary co-operation and mutual aid. Anarcho-capitalists, even if they do reject the State, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists".

^Carson, Kevin (8 November 2015). "Are We All Mutualists?" Center for a Stateless Society. Retrieved 23 March 2020. "This willingness to recognize the joint homesteading of land and natural resources (in such historical forms as village open-field systems, common pasture and waste, public rights of way and town commons, common fisheries, etc.) is a refreshing contrast to the all too many right-libertarians who insist that property can only be owned by individuals (most notably Ayn Rand’s claim that the theft of Native American tribal land by European settlers was justified because they didn’t believe in any “legitimate” form of property rights)."

^Kropotkin, Peter (1927). Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings. Courier Dover Publications. p. 150. ISBN9780486119861. It attacks not only capital, but also the main sources of the power of capitalism: law, authority, and the State.

^Carlson, Jennifer D. (2012). "Libertarianism". In Miller, Wilbur R. The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia. SAGE Publications. p. 1006. "[S]ocialist libertarians view any concentration of power into the hands of a few (whether politically or economically) as antithetical to freedom and thus advocate for the simultaneous abolition of both government and capitalism".

^Riggenbach, Jeff (26 November 2010). "Anarchy, State, and Robert Nozick". Mises Daily. Mises Institute. Retrieved 19 March 2020. [Nozick] identified voluntary cooperation as the 'core principle' of ethics, maintaining that the duty not to interfere with another person's 'domain of choice' is '[a]ll that any society should (coercively) demand'; higher levels of ethics, involving positive benevolence, represent instead a 'personal ideal' that should be left to 'a person's own individual choice and development.' And that certainly sounds like an attempt to embrace libertarianism all over again. My own view is that Nozick's thinking about these matters evolved over time and that what he wrote at any given time was an accurate reflection of what he was thinking at that time.

^Sanchez, Julian (21 June 2011). "Nozick, Libertarianism, and Thought Experiments". Julian Shanchez.com. Retrieved 19 March 2020. "Nozick always thought of himself as a libertarian in a broad sense, right up to his final days, even as his views became somewhat less 'hardcore.'"

^"Join the Libertarian Party". Libertarian Party. 1971. Retrieved 18 January 2020. I certify that I oppose the initiation of force to achieve political or social goals.

^Chodorov, Frank. "Taxation Is Robbery". Mises Institute. Retrieved 10 July 2012. Reprint from Chodorov, Frank (1962). Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist. New York: The Devin-Adair Company. pp. 216–239.

^Miller 1987, p. 290. "A student and disciple of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard combined the laissez-faire economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker".

^ abSanchez, Julian; Weigel, David. "Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters?". Reason. Reason Foundation. Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes.

^Heppell, Timothy (June 2002). "The ideological composition of the Parliamentary Conservative Party 1992–97". British Journal of Politics and International Relations. 4 (2): 299–324. doi:10.1111/1467-856X.t01-1-00006.

^Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "My Battle With The Thought Police," Mises Daily (Mises Institute, April 12, 2005). The quoted material in the text is intended as an elaboration of an earlier discussion in Democracy; Hoppe notes that "a few sentences" of Democracy: The God that Failed address this point and writes: "In its proper context these statements are hardly more offensive than saying that the Catholic Church should excommunicate those violating its fundamental precepts or that a nudist colony should expel those insisting on wearing bathing suits." In Democracy, he suggests that, in a stateless society, it would make sense for people forming communities "for the purpose of protecting family and kin" to eschew "tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal." He says that "the advocates of alternative, non-family-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism—will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order." Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction 2001) 218.

^Hoppe, "Immigration" 93n23. Proponents of open borders, he maintains, "were initially drawn to libertarianism as juveniles because of its "antiauthoritarianism" (trust no authority) and seeming "tolerance," in particular toward 'alternative'—nonbourgeois—lifestyles. As adults, they have been arrested in this phase of mental development They express special 'sensitivity' in every manner of discrimination and are not inhibited in using the power of the central state to impose non-discrimination or 'civil rights' statutes on society. Consequently, by prohibiting other property owners from discrimination as they see fit, they are allowed to live at others' expense. They can indulge in their 'alternative' lifestyle without having to pay the 'normal' price for such conduct, i.e., discrimination and exclusion. To legitimize this course of action, they insist that one lifestyle is as good and acceptable as another. This leads first to multiculturalism, then to cultural relativism, and finally to 'open borders.'"

^In 2008, Paul was reported to conclude his campaign stump "speeches with a three-part paean to individualism: 'I don't want to run your life,' 'I don't want to run the economy,' and 'I don't want to run the world.'" See Julian Sanchez and David Weigel, "Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters," Reason (Reason Foundation, Jan. 16, 2008). The primary focus of the article is the ongoing controversy over the authorship of racially charged statements contained in newsletters published by Paul between around 1989 and 1994; the article cites various sources identifying Lew Rockwell as the author, as well as Rockwell's denial of authorship and his characterization of attempts to raise the issue as "hysterical smears."

^Justin Raimondo, "Confessions of an Obama Cultist," AntiWar.Com (Randolph Bourne Institute, March 8, 2008); Raimondo, Reclaiming. The openly gay Raimondo—see Justin Raimondo, In Praise of Outlaws: Rebuilding Gay Liberation (San Francisco: Students for a Libertarian Society 1979)—may be as dismissive of so-called "beltway libertarianism" as Rockwell, but he shows no signs of uncritically embracing the right-libertarianism of Hoppe and others.